The RIP Famous Person Thread

[harrybarracuda]

Tributes as ‘Happy Days’ creator Garry Marshall dies at 81
Thursday, July 21, 2016
Laura Harding



Marshall, who also created Mork & Mindy starring Robin Williams and directed hit films including Pretty Woman, The Princess Diaries, Beaches, and Valentine’s Day, died of complications from pneumonia after a stroke.

Winkler shot to fame playing the rebellious Arthur ‘Fonzie’ Fonzarelli in the family comedy and has said he owes Marshall his career.

He wrote on Twitter: “Garry Marshall Rest In Peace... Thank you for my professional life. Thank you for your loyalty, friendship, and generosity.

“Larger than life, funnier than most, wise and the definition of friend.”

Marshall died in hospital in Burbank, California, on July 19, said his publicist, Michelle Bega.

Director Ron Howard, who starred in Happy Days as the clean-cut Richie Cunningham, said he missed Marshall already, writing: “RIP #GarryMarshall whose humour & humanity inspired. He was a world class boss & mentor whose creativity and leadership meant a ton to me.

“Garry’s mantra, to those who succeeded in entertainment was simple ... ‘Life is more important that show business’.

“I miss Garry already. He leaves a huge void for all who were lucky to be in his orbit. A great friend.”

Goldie Hawn, who starred opposite her partner Kurt Russell in Marshall’s film Overboard, wrote: “Our beloved Gary Marshall has passed! He was so special to our family and we will miss his gift of true joy and love!

"Thank you Gary for Overboard and all the films you made that had humanity, humour and goodness that lifted our spirits. God has you now. Rest dear one. We love you.”

Ashton Kutcher, who starred in Marshall’s films Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, paid tribute, saying: “I lost a friend & mentor. We lost a beautiful man & masterful story teller. Gary Marshall I love you. I hope I get to go where you are.”

Topher Grace, who also starred in Valentine’s Day, wrote: “Oh man, this is a tough one. Honoured I spent time with this kind man. My love to his wife and family. #garrymarshall.”

Marshall, who was a former journalist, first found success in 1970 when he and his writing partner turned the Broadway show The Odd Couple into a TV series.

His first big screen success was Pretty Woman, starring Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, in 1990. The film was such a hit the pair reunited for Runaway Bride in 1999.

He also made appearances on screen in supporting roles such as a casino boss in Albert Brooks’ 1985 film Lost In America. and interfering network boss Stan Lansing in 90s comedy Murphy Brown.

Tributes as ?Happy Days? creator Garry Marshall dies at 81 | Irish Examiner

[harrybarracuda]

Ex-Lebanon hostage Thomas Sutherland dies at age 85
USA TODAY NETWORK Jason Pohl, Fort Collins Coloradoan 10:30 p.m. EDT July 23, 2016



FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Thomas Sutherland, a Colorado State University professor who was teaching in Beirut when he was taken hostage and held in darkness for more than six years, died Friday evening at his Fort Collins home. He was 85.

Family and friends on Saturday remembered Sutherland for both the optimism he brought the U.S. upon his return in 1991 as well as the youthful energy and characteristics of a gentleman exhibited through his final days.

“He just passed away so peacefully,” his wife, Jean Sutherland, said. “That’s just the way he wanted to.”

Thomas Sutherland was born on May 3, 1931, and raised on a Scottish dairy farm. He graduated from Glasgow University in Scotland and moved in the 1950s to the United States, where he attended graduated school at Iowa State University.

He became a professor of animal sciences at Colorado State, where he taught for nearly three decades before going on leave in 1983 and serving as a dean of faculty of agriculture and food science at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.

Islamic militants captured Sutherland on June 9, 1985, near his Beirut home along with 53 other civilians, including Associated Press bureau chief Terry Anderson. He spent 2,354 days in captivity, never seeing the light of day, before being freed on Nov. 18, 1991.

“I spent six years out of the seven years I was in captivity with Tommy,” Anderson told The Associated Press on Saturday. “We were kept in the same cells and sometimes on the same chain. Whenever they moved us, generally Tommy would show up with me. He was a kind and gentle man.”

Sutherland taught him French when they were hostages, Anderson said. “He spoke beautiful French. We practiced irregular verbs,” he said.

Anderson said Sutherland “was a guy who remembered everyone he ever met. He never forgot anyone. I don’t know how he did it. He was such a people person that he remembered everybody. When we were in prison, we would sit and talk about things we had done and places he had gone. He always talked about the people he met there, and he remembered them. He was a very, very good man.”

Sutherland returned to Fort Collins on Dec. 1 of that year to much fanfare, celebration and hope.

in a posting Saturday on Colorado State’s website, CSU’s President Tony Frank said: “The entire Colorado State University community joins once again in honoring a true hero — who believed that an understanding of agricultural science could bring relief to people and communities in hunger — and that education could be a force for good and light in our world that would transcend borders and differences among nations,”

Sutherland and his wife were enthusiastic supporters of local philanthropic efforts. The couple established the Sutherland Family Foundation to support Fort Collins nonprofits with the $16.5 million they received as part of an award from a massive lawsuit against Iran for its involvement in the hostage situation.

Asked in 2001 how he hoped people would remember him, Sutherland said, “I would like them to remember that I was the recipient of an awful lot of kindness and goodwill and would like, if possible, to repay that. And that they could say when I die: ‘Here's a guy who did do something for other people.’ ”

Ex-Lebanon hostage Thomas Sutherland dies at age 85

[harrybarracuda]

Marni Nixon, the Voice Behind the Screen, Dies at 86
By MARGALIT FOXJULY 25, 2016



Marni Nixon, the American cinema’s most unsung singer, died on Sunday in New York. She was 86.

The cause was breast cancer, said Randy Banner, a student and friend.

Classically trained, Ms. Nixon was throughout the 1950s and ’60s the unseen — and usually uncredited — singing voice of the stars in a spate of celebrated Hollywood films. She dubbed Deborah Kerr in “The King and I,” Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” among many others.

Her other covert outings included singing for Jeanne Crain in “Cheaper by the Dozen,” Janet Leigh in “Pepe” and Ida Lupino in “Jennifer.” “The ghostess with the mostest,” the newspapers called her, a description that eventually began to rankle.

Before her Hollywood days and long afterward, Ms. Nixon was an acclaimed concert singer, a specialist in contemporary music who appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic; a recitalist at Carnegie, Alice Tully and Town Halls in New York; and a featured singer on one of Leonard Bernstein’s televised young people’s concerts.

Her concerts and her many recordings — including works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Webern, Ives, Copland, Gershwin and Kern — drew wide critical praise. Yet as late as 1990, decades after Ms. Nixon had made good on her vow to perform only as herself, she remained, in the words of The Los Angeles Times, “the best known of the ghost singers.”

At midcentury, Hollywood was more inclined to cast bankable stars than trained singers in films that called for singing. As a result, generations of Americans have grown accustomed to Ms. Nixon’s voice, if not her face, in standards like “Getting to Know You,” from “The King and I”; “I Feel Pretty,” from “West Side Story”; and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from “My Fair Lady.”

Deborah Kerr was nominated for an Academy Award in 1956 for her role as Anna in “The King and I”; the film’s soundtrack album sold hundreds of thousands of copies. For singing Anna’s part on that album, Ms. Nixon recalled, she received a total of $420.

“You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed,” Ms. Nixon told the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2007. “Twentieth Century Fox, when I did ‘The King and I,’ threatened me.” She continued, “They said, if anybody ever knows that you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see to it that you don’t work in town again.”

Though Ms. Nixon honored the bargain, her work soon became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets. She became something of a cult figure, appearing as a guest on “To Tell the Truth” and as an answer to clues featured by “Jeopardy!,” Trivial Pursuit and at least one New York Times crossword puzzle.

Her increasing renown helped bring her spectral trade into the light and encouraged her to push for official recognition. “The anonymity didn’t bother me until I sang Natalie Wood’s songs in ‘West Side Story,’ ” Ms. Nixon told The Times in 1967. “Then I saw how important my singing was to the picture. I was giving my talent, and somebody else was taking the credit.”

Although the studios seldom accorded Ms. Nixon the screen credit and royalties that she began to demand, both became customary for ghost singers.

Starting as a teenager in the late 1940s and continuing for the next two decades, Ms. Nixon lent her crystalline soprano to some 50 films, sometimes contributing just a line or two of song — sometimes just a single, seamless note — that the actress could not manage on her own.

The voice of an angel heard by Ingrid Bergman in “Joan of Arc”? It was Ms. Nixon’s.

The songs of the nightclub singer, played by Ms. Kerr, in “An Affair to Remember”? Also Ms. Nixon.

The second line of the couplet “But square-cut or pear-shape/These rocks don’t lose their shape,” with its pinpoint high note on “their,” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”? That was Ms. Nixon too. (The film’s star Marilyn Monroe sang the rest of the number, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.”)

It was a decidedly peculiar calling — and not one on which Ms. Nixon had ever planned — entailing not so much imitating actors as embodying them.

“It’s fascinating, getting inside the actresses you’re singing for,” she told The New York Journal-American in 1964. “It’s like cutting off the top of their heads and seeing what’s underneath. You have to know how they feel, as well as how they talk, in order to sing as they would sing — if they could sing.”

Over time, however, Ms. Nixon came to regard her spectacular mimetic gift as more curse than blessing. For despite her myriad accomplishments as a singer of art songs, she was obliged to spend years exorcising her ghostly cinematic presence.

“It got so I’d lent my voice to so many others that I felt it no longer belonged to me,” she told The Times in 1981. “It was eerie; I had lost part of myself.”

A petite, fine-boned woman who resembled Julie Andrews, Ms. Nixon was born Margaret Nixon McEathron on Feb. 22, 1930, in Altadena, Calif., near Los Angeles.

She began studying the violin at 4 and throughout her childhood played bit parts — “the freckle-faced brat,” she called her typical role — in a string of Hollywood movies. At 11, already possessed of a fine singing voice, she won a vocal competition at the Los Angeles County Fair and found her true calling. She became a private pupil of Vera Schwarz, a distinguished Austrian soprano who had settled in the United States.

At 17, Ms. Nixon appeared as a vocal soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski, singing in Orff’s “Carmina Burana.” She later studied opera at Tanglewood with Sarah Caldwell and Boris Goldovsky.

During her teenage years, Ms. Nixon worked as a messenger at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Knowing of her musical ability — she had perfect pitch and was an impeccable sight reader — the studio began recruiting her to furnish the singing voices of young actresses. The work helped pay for Ms. Nixon’s voice lessons.

Her first significant dubbing job was singing a Hindu lullaby for Margaret O’Brien in “The Secret Garden,” released in 1949.

Ms. Nixon did occasionally take center stage, as when she played Eliza Doolittle in a 1964 revival of “My Fair Lady” at City Center in New York. (Ms. Andrews had played the part in the original Broadway production, which opened in 1956.) In 1965, Ms. Nixon was seen on camera in a small role as a singing nun in “The Sound of Music,” starring Ms. Andrews.

On Broadway, Ms. Nixon appeared in the Sigmund Romberg musical “The Girl in Pink Tights” in 1954 and, more recently, in the musical drama “James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’ ” (2000), the 2001 revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” and the 2003 revival of “Nine.”

Ms. Nixon’s first marriage, to Ernest Gold, a film composer who won an Oscar for the 1960 film “Exodus,” ended in divorce, as did her second, to Lajos Frederick Fenster. Her third husband, Albert Block, died in 2015.

Survivors include her daughters from her first marriage, Martha Carr and Melani Gold Friedman; her sisters Donyl Mern Aleman, Adair McEathron Jenkins and Ariel Lea Witbeck; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. A son from her first marriage, Andrew Gold, a popular songwriter whose hit “Thank You for Being a Friend” became the theme of the NBC sitcom “The Golden Girls,” died in 2011 at 59.

Ms. Nixon’s other onscreen credits include “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” In the 1970s and ’80s, she was the host of “Boomerang,” a popular children’s television show in Seattle, where she had made her home for some years before moving to the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

She also supplied the singing voice of Grandmother Fa in Disney’s animated film “Mulan,” released in 1998. (The character’s spoken dialogue was voiced by the actress June Foray.) She taught for many years at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where she was the founding director of the vocal department.

But it was her work as a ghost that is enshrined forever in the cinematic canon: “West Side Story” won the Oscar for best picture of 1961; “My Fair Lady” won for 1964. Both films remain perennials on television.

Ms. Nixon, who continued singing until she was in her 80s, eventually came to regard her heard-but-not-seen life with affection. She paid it homage in a one-woman show, “Marni Nixon: The Voice of Hollywood,” with which she toured the country for years.

She did likewise in a memoir, “I Could Have Sung All Night,” published in 2006. (The memoir was written with a ghost, Stephen Cole, whom Ms. Nixon credited prominently on the cover and the title page.)

In the few movie musicals made today, directors tend to cast actors who are trained singers (like Meryl Streep in “Into the Woods”) or those whose star power mitigates the fact that they are not (like Helena Bonham Carter in “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”).

What this means is that the ghost singers who were once a Hollywood mainstay have now, for the most part, become ghosts themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/ar...-86.html?&_r=0

[can123]

Dances with Wolves actor Chief David Bald Eagle dies at 97 - BBC News

[Looper]

Neighbours Mrs Mangel actress Vivean Gray dies aged 92

Vivean Gray, the British actress who played one of Neighbours' "greatest characters" Mrs Mangel, has died aged 92.

Gray played neighbourhood gossip Nell Mangel between 1986 and 1988 — a role that was originally meant to run for a short three-week stint.

Before she played the Ramsay Street villain, Gray landed roles in Prisoner and as Mrs Jessup in The Sullivans, once again playing the part of the nosy neighbour.

She left Neighbours partly because of abuse she received from fans who had trouble distinguishing Gray from her on-screen character.

Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison said he was saddened by Gray's passing, but remembered her as a soap legend.

"Mrs Mangel was the ultimate busybody, remembered for her conservatism and her caustic wit," he said in a statement.

"She was a true soap legend and we thank her for all the wonderful memories."

Mark Little, Mrs Mangel's on-screen son, said Gray was a "legend many times over".

"I was privileged to know and work with her," he tweeted.

"We laugh a lot creating The Mangel."
YouTube: Mrs Mangel's last scene on Neighbours.

Alan Fletcher, better known as Ramsay Street's resident doctor Karl Kennedy, expressed his sadness on Twitter.

Born in Cleethorpes in Lincolnshire, Britain, Gray moved to Australia in 1953 to pursue acting.

Leaving behind three siblings and a family-run fish and chip shop, Gray landed roles in Power without Glory, Homicide, Division 4, All the Rivers Run and Anzacs.

As well as silver screen appearances in Picnic at Hanging rock and The Last Wave.

An image of Gray playing mathematics teacher Miss McGraw in Picnic at Hanging Rock appeared on an Australia Post stamp in 1995.

Neighbours Mrs Mangel actress Vivean Gray dies aged 92 - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[Looper]

Postman Pat voice actor Ken Barrie dies aged 73

Ken Barrie, the voice of beloved animated TV character Postman Pat, has died aged 73, according to a family member.



Barrie famously voiced Postman Pat and other characters in the stop-motion animated children's series about the adventures of Pat and his cat Jess as they delivered mail to the residents of fictional valley Greendale.

He also sang the show's theme song, which was released as a single and spent 15 weeks in the top 75.

A family member told the BCC Barrie had died in his home in Uxbridge, London after being diagnosed with cancer.

Barrie became the voice of Pat in 1981 and provided voices for popular characters such as handyman Ted Glen, the Reverend Peter Timms and farmer Alf Thompson in the show's first season.



He reprised his role as Pat for a second series in the 1990s and again in 2004.

Postman Pat voice actor Ken Barrie dies aged 73 - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

[harrybarracuda]

Gloria DeHaven, perky star of 1940s-50s Hollywood musicals, dies at age 91
BY WILL DUNHAM



Gloria DeHaven, the perky singing actress who starred in a parade of breezy Hollywood musicals in the 1940s and 1950s and gave Frank Sinatra his first big-screen kiss, has died at age 91, her agent said on Monday.

DeHaven, who appeared in more than two dozen films starting as a child in a bit role in Charlie Chaplin's last silent movie, died on Saturday in hospice care in Las Vegas, Scott Stander said in an email.

The actress suffered a stroke a few months ago, the agent said.

A versatile singer from a show business family, she thrived in Hollywood musicals, mostly from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, until the genre fell out of fashion in the 1950s.

DeHaven starred in "Two Girls and a Sailor" (1944) with Van Johnson, June Allyson and Jimmy Durante; "Summer Holiday" (1948) with Mickey Rooney; "Yes Sir That's My Baby" (1949) with Donald O'Connor; "Summer Stock" (1950) with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly; and "So This Is Paris" (1955) with Tony Curtis.

In the musical "Step Lively" (1944), DeHaven gave a young Sinatra his first on-screen smooch.

In the late 1950s, DeHaven's film career stalled and she turned to acting on television and in stage musicals and singing in nightclubs. She returned to the big screen for the 1997 comedy "Out to Sea" with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

She was born in Los Angeles on July 23, 1925, to parents who were vaudeville performers. She made her film debut with a small role in Chaplin's "Modern Times" (1936) co-starring Paulette Goddard, a silent gem released in the era of talkies, exploring the pitfalls of modern industrialized society.

"Chaplin needed two kids to play Paulette Goddard's ragamuffin sisters," DeHaven told the Toronto Star in 1989. "All we had to do was wear tattered clothes, eat bananas and do big takes. I thought, 'If this is show business, count me in.'"

Her breakout role was in the Lucille Ball musical comedy "Best Foot Forward" (1943), a film that also boosted Allyson's fortunes.

DeHaven's marriage to actor John Payne, best known as the co-star of the classic "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), ended in divorce. She was married four times to three different men (one twice) and she had four children.

(Reporting by Will Dunham and Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott and Kevin Liffey)

[harrybarracuda]

Big Lebowski actor David Huddleston dies at 85
DERRIK J LANG
Last updated 16:31, August 5 2016



David Huddleston, the character actor best known for portraying titular roles in The Big Lebowski and Santa Claus: The Movie, has died. He was 85.

Huddleston's wife, Sarah C Koeppe, says he died Tuesday of advanced heart and kidney disease in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Huddleston famously portrayed the blustery millionaire whose identity Jeff Bridges' character is mistaken for in the 1998 cult comedy The Big Lebowski.

He also personified a jolly St Nick alongside Dudley Moore in Santa Claus: The Movie and hilariously played the mayor in Blazing Saddles.

Other credits in Huddleston's 55-year career include the films Fools' Parade, Family Reunion and Bad Company, as well as guest appearances on such TV series as Gunsmoke, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls and The Wonder Years.

Huddleston was born in 1930 in Vinton, Virginia. He served as an aircraft engine mechanic in the US Air Force before studying acting in New York.

He began his career in the theatre, acting in national tours of such shows as Music Man, Mame and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

- AP

Big Lebowski actor David Huddleston dies at 85 | Stuff.co.nz

[AntRobertson]

Motor racing legend Chris Amon dies

By Dale Budge

5:35 PM Wednesday Aug 3, 2016

New Zealand lost one of its finest motor racing drivers with the death of Chris Amon today.

He passed away this morning in Rotorua Hospital after a battle with cancer. He was 73.

Along with Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme, Amon formed a three-pronged New Zealand challenge on the tracks of Europe and America who proved Kiwis could indeed fly.

Amon was, on paper, the least successful of the trio who graced the Formula One championship in the sixties and early seventies.

McLaren was highly regarded as a fine driver and engineer - the team he founded is a perennial Formula One favourite - and Hulme won the 1967 Formula One drivers championship.


New Zealand motorsport legend, Chris Amon in 2010. Photo / David Rowland

But fellow drivers and team owners recognised that Amon possessed greater natural talent than McLaren or Hulme for driving at speed and had an unerring feel for setting up a car to go really fast.

"He is one of the most skilful and natural drivers ever to grace Formula One,'' three-times F1 world champion Sir Jackie Stewart said.

Christopher Arthur Amon, MBE, son of wealthy sheep farmer Ngaio Amon, was born in Bulls on July 20, 1943. He was taught to drive by a shepherd on the farm at the age of six.

At 19, he went to Europe to launch his international career at the urging of English driver Reg Parnell who had raced him in New Zealand in 1962.

Within five years after stints with Parnell's team and McLaren in F1 and sports car racing in the United States, Amon signed with Ferrari in 1967.

The three seasons with the Italian team was a time when Amon was a prince to the Tifosi (Ferrari fans).

But the stint which was plagued by unreliable engines.



Chris Amon, right, waves to the crowd from his 7-litres Ford automobile after he and compatriot Bruce McLaren won the 24-hours endurance for sports cars, at Le Mans. Photo / AP

On Amon's legendary lack of good fortune during his Formula One career, American driver Mario Andretti, a Formula 1 champion and Indy 500 winner once joked: "If Chris Amon was an undertaker, no one would die.''

Frustrated, Amon quit to join March in 1970 - and missed out on Ferrari's new flat-12 cyclinder engine which was to become one of the best engines of the 70s.

Amon says he never got the car he needed from Ferrari because they were too diversified.

"They were trying to do Formula One, Formula Two, sports cars, CanAm cars, and even the Tasman series out here.

"A lot of people say I was very unlucky and I suppose in terms of results, I was,'' Amon said.

"But one thing I do always say to people is that I am very lucky to be here.''

In a reference to the deaths of his peers such as Jim Clark, Lorenzo Bandini and McLaren, he said: "It was such a dangerous era and I don't look back with any sense of frustration.

"I am eternally thankful that I survived.''

Amon never won a championship F1 grand prix, but did win eight non-championship GPs.

"It was very frustrating sometimes - we were so close and yet so far on so many occasions right through my career really.

"But I did have a reasonable amount of success in sports cars and that sort of balanced it up a bit.''

His other major wins included the Silverstone International Trophy, the 1000km Monza, the Daytona 24 Hours, the Tasman Series.

The highlight of Amon's success in sports car racing came with the 1966 win at the Le Mans 24-hour race in a Ford GT40 Mark II with McLaren as his partner. This year was the 50th anniversary of that success.

Hulme was second in another Ford with Briton Ken Miles.

Amon started 96 F1 races, achieving five poles, led 183 laps in seven races, reached the podium 11 times and scored a total of 83 championship points.

After stints with teams such as March, Matra, Tecno, Tyrrell, BRM, Ensign, and Walter Wolf Racing, Amon retired, returning home to run the family farm. His last F1 race was the Canadian grand prix in 1976.

Amon was inducted into the New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.

An extraordinarily gifted driver
D'Arcy Waldegrave, the host of Radio Sport's The Sauce, says he left a lasting legacy on world motorsport.

"He was a terrific human being, a lovely guy, an extraordinarily gifted driver, who of course used to race for Ferrari among a number of other marques."

[harrybarracuda]

^Ant, there's the RIP Sporting Heroes thread for that. Just saying'.

Jonathan D. Krane, Producer of the 'Look Who's Talking' Films, Dies at 65
12:34 PM PDT 8/7/2016




Jonathan D. Krane with his wife Sally Kellerman in 2013


The husband of actress Sally Kellerman, he worked on more than a dozen films that starred John Travolta.

Jonathan D. Krane, who produced the Look Who's Talking films that starred John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and, in the first two comedies, Bruce Willis as the voice of a snarky toddler, has died. He was 65.

Krane, the husband of Oscar-nominated M*A*S*H actress Sally Kellerman, died suddenly Monday in their home in the Hollywood Hills, her manager, Bruce Tufeld, told The Hollywood Reporter.

"I am totally devastated," she wrote on her Facebook page.

Krane also produced the action-packed Face/Off (1997), directed by John Woo, and Mike Nichols' election campaign movie Primary Colors (1998), still two more films that toplined Travolta, whom Krane once managed.

Their other collaborations included The Experts (1989), Chains of Gold (1991), Phenomenon (1996), Michael (1996), The General's Daughter (1999), Battlefield Earth (2000), Lucky Numbers (2000), Swordfish (2001), Domestic Disturbance (2001) and Basic (2003).

Krane founded the talent management/production firm Management Company Entertainment Group in 1997, and its fortunes soared with the success of the low-budget Look Who's Talking (1989), which starred Travolta as a cab driver who gets involved with Alley, who plays a single mother. Willis' Mikey character can communicate with other babies.

The Amy Heckerling comedy grossed nearly $300 million at the global box office, and the sequel, Look Who's Talking Too (1990), also directed by Heckerling, brought in another $120 million.

However, MCEG overextended itself when it paid a reported $83 million for the foreign distribution company Virgin Vision and then filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990. Shareholders including Krane — who resigned as chairman and CEO and whose interest in the company was at one time reportedly worth $15 million — were virtually wiped out.

"A lot of people seemed glad that I failed," Krane told the Los Angeles Times in November 1993, before the opening of Look Who's Talking Now. "I learned that I'm not a golden boy. And I also learned that arrogance can be a horrible trait."

Look Who's Talking Now (1993) grossed just $10 million in the U.S.

The son of a Los Angeles car-leasing executive, Krane graduated from St. John's College and Yale University School of Law. He was president of Blake Edwards' production company and executive produced the director's Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), The Man Who Loved Women (1983), Micki + Maude (1984), A Fine Mess (1986), That's Life! (1986) and Blind Date (1987), Wiilis' feature debut.

Later, he produced Nicolas Roeg's Cold Heaven (1991), starring Theresa Russell; Love Is a Gun (1994), with Eric Roberts; Mad City (1997), directed by Costa-Gavras; and The Lay of the Land (1997), starring Kellerman, whom he met at a group therapy session. They married in 1980.

Survivors also include their twin children Jack and Hannah.

Jonathan Krane Dead: 'Look Who's Talking' Producer Was 64 | Hollywood Reporter

[AntRobertson]

Oh yeah, my bad, forgot about that one.

[blue]

Oh yeah, my bad, forgot about that one.

pussy....
tell him you'll post your dead where you like

[Ratchaburi]

Bernard Farrely ( Miget ) 71 years old RIP

One of the greatest surfers in Australia

[bobo746]

^https://teakdoor.com/the-sports-room/...-thread-3.html

[Maanaam]

Bernard Farrely ( Miget ) 71 years old RIP

One of the greatest surfers in Australia

My first surfboard was a Midget Farrelly.

[Latindancer]

Crikey...Sally Kellerman (Hotlips Houlihan from MASH) will be 80 next year !

Predeceased by her 65 year old husband.

[TheDukeofNewcastle]

Duke of Westminster
One of Britain’s richest men and most influential landlords, the Duke of Westminster, has died at the age of 64.

Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, who owned swatches of prime real estate in London’s Mayfair and Belgravia districts and occupied a key role in the city’s property market, died on Tuesday afternoon at the Royal Preston hospital in Lancashire. A spokeswoman for his estate said he had become ill suddenly on his Abbeystead estate.

The duke, whose Grosvenor property company traces its roots back to the 17th century, heavily invested in London property and owned large amounts of commercial and residential space in some of the city’s most expensive areas. His company also has substantial holdings in Scotland and continental Europe.

His wealth was given as £9.35bn in this year’s Sunday Times rich list, which put him in sixth place following an increase in his fortune.

Grosvenor was reported to have added £37.7m to his wealth last year as his property empire paid its first dividend since 2010.

However, he was believed to have been hit by a global stock market rout in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union which led to the UK’s 15 richest individuals losing £4bn during the day.

The duke, whose company has since warned that the Brexit vote has “chilled” investor interest in London, led the decline with a loss of £727m, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire index.

Born in 1951 in Omagh, County Tyrone, he left Harrow with two O-levels and later joined the Territorial Army before attending the military academy at Sandhurst and working his way up to the rank of general.


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His father was a former Ulster Unionist MP for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone. While Grosvenor himself had been a member of the Conservative party, he left during the 1990s in protest at the party’s policy on changing Britain’s leasehold system.

A close friend of Prince Charles, he was godfather to Prince William while one of his four children, Hugh Grosvenor, is a godfather to Prince George. The same son is in line to inherit his dukedom.

A spokesperson for the Grosvenor Estate said: “It is with the greatest sadness that we can confirm that the Duke of Westminster, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor (64) died this afternoon at Royal Preston hospital.

“He was taken there from the Abbeystead estate in Lancashire where he had suddenly been taken ill. His family are all aware and they ask for privacy and understanding at this very difficult time.”

[harrybarracuda]

Kenny Baker, actor behind R2-D2, dies
The 3ft 8in actor, who starred in six Star Wars films as well as Time Bandits and Flash Gordon, was 83



The British actor who played R2-D2 in the Star Wars films has died at the age of 83 after a long illness.

Kenny Baker, who was 3ft 8in tall, shot to fame in 1977 when he first played the robot character.

He went on to play the character in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as well as the three Star Wars prequels from 1999 to 2005.

Baker also appeared in a number of other much-loved films in the 1980s, including The Elephant Man, Time Bandits and Flash Gordon.

His niece, Abigail Shield, paid tribute to her uncle. She told the Guardian: “It was expected, but it’s sad nonetheless. He had a very long and fulfilled life. He brought lots of happiness to people and we’ll be celebrating the fact that he was well loved throughout the world. We’re all very proud of what he achieved in his lifetime.”

Baker and Shield’s father, Ian, grew up in Birmingham. She said: “When he was a child, he was told that he probably wouldn’t survive through puberty, being a little person in those times, they didn’t have a very good life expectancy. He did extremely well in his life. He was very ill for the last few years so we had been expecting it. He had been looked after by one of his nephews, who found him on Saturday morning.”

Baker met his wife Eileen after an appearance on the Michael Parkinson TV chat show. She wrote in and said she was a little person too and wanted to meet him. “They got married soon after,” Shield said. “Sadly she died of epilepsy about 20 years ago.”

Shield added: “He had problems with his lungs and was often in a wheelchair. He was very poorly for a long time. He was asked to go out to LA for the new Star Wars premiere but he was told he was too ill to travel. Luckily he did manage to meet George Lucas again when he came to Manchester.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/201...dies-star-wars

[Iceman123]

^
Small loss.

RIP

[barrylad66]

^
Small loss.

RIP

GooD innings R.I.P

[misskit]

Missed this one last week. I grew up listening to Pete Fountain albums my parents played constantly.


Pete Fountain, Legendary New Orleans Jazz Clarinetist, Dies at 86



With his ready wit and infectious laugh, Fountain — who often appeared on Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson's TV shows — was the epitome of the New Orleanian who knew how to "let the good times roll."
Clarinetist Pete Fountain, whose Dixieland jazz virtuosity and irrepressible wit endeared him to his native New Orleans and earned him decades of national television fame, has died. He was 86.

Benny Harrell, Fountain's son-in-law and manager, said Fountain was in hospice care in New Orleans when he died early Saturday of heart failure.

With his ready wit and infectious laugh, Fountain was the epitome of the New Orleanian who knew how to "let the good times roll." He was well known to television fans through his appearances on the Lawrence Welk and Johnny Carson shows. Even his blues had a happy note.

In New Orleans, Fountain opened his first Bourbon Street club in 1960, later moving to a larger location on the bawdy thoroughfare before settling in for a long run at the nearby Hilton on Canal Street in the 1970s.

In a tradition-drenched city, his annual trek through the French Quarter with his "Half-Fast Walking Club" was a raucous New Orleans ritual — one he rarely missed even when he was in failing health.

Fountain, who often split time between the New Orleans area and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, suffered devastation when Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, destroying his Bay St. Louis, Miss., home. But he stayed upbeat. Late in 2005, after several temporary homes, he settled in Hammond, La., telling The Daily Star newspaper, "We went from 10,000 square feet to 1,500. That's really what you would call downsizing."

Fountain started playing professionally on Bourbon Street in his teens. He once called the street of strip clubs, music joints and bars his "conservatory." In his early years he toured nationally with the Dukes of Dixieland and the late trumpeter Al Hirt. Real fame came in 1957 when he joined The Lawrence Welk Show as a headliner.

He expressed deep appreciation for the exposure Welk gave him and his music. Still, Fountain also joked that his Bourbon didn't mix with Welk's champagne. There was, for example, the night Fountain overfilled the bubble machine, stranding Welk on live television in a virtual storm of blowing bubbles.

Fountain's freewheeling personality and swinging performances contrasted sharply with Welk's rigidly orchestrated polkas and pop hits. The breakup came in 1959 after Welk chastised him for jazzing up an arrangement of "Silver Bells" in a Christmas performance.

Fountain's recording of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" sold more than a half million copies in 1959. It stuck as an unofficial theme song, and he even called his autobiography A Closer Walk. His version was so popular that he half-complained that audiences wouldn't let him off the stage without his playing it again.

Funeral arrangements were pending. Harrell said a funeral Mass was being planned for St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter.

"We'll have a big jazz funeral after his Mass," Harrell said.

Fountain and his wife, Beverly, were to celebrate their 65th wedding anniversary in October, according to Harrell. In addition to his wife, survivors include three children, six grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

Among Fountain's losses in Katrina were photos of Louis Armstrong, with whom he performed, his collection of vintage guns, a Porsche and his part-time gig at a storm-damaged casino.

"But I have two of my best clarinets, so I'm OK. I can still toot," he told the Associated Press at the time. He found one of his gold records, covered with mud, and one of the two clarinets was recovered by a neighbor a few blocks from his house.

Health problems caused Fountain to miss the Half-Fast march during Mardi Gras 2006. But he showed up at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival the following May, vowing to do his part to help the stricken city's recovery.

Musically, Fountain traced his style to Benny Goodman, for drive and technique, and Irving Fazola, for the round, full tone. Fountain grew up listening to Goodman's records, but Fazola was playing in the French Quarter where Fountain could listen in person. The result was Fountain's distinctive combination of swing and Dixieland.

After the Welk show, he was in demand for guest appearances and performed for stars like Ed Sullivan, Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, and played with jazzmen like Louis Armstrong, Harry James and Harry Connick Jr.

He made 58 appearances with Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. But he didn't leave his home base for long and kept a band steadily employed at the clubs where he performed.


Pete Fountain Dead: Jazz Clarinetist Was 86 | Hollywood Reporter

[misskit]

[harrybarracuda]

Bobby Hutcherson, Vibraphonist With Coloristic Range of Sound, Dies at 75
By NATE CHINEN AUG. 16, 2016



Bobby Hutcherson, one of the most admired and accomplished vibraphonists in jazz, died Monday at his home in Montara, Calif. He was 75.

He died after a long battle with emphysema, said Marshall Lamm, a spokesman for Mr. Hutcherson’s family.

Mr. Hutcherson’s career took flight in the early 1960s, as jazz was slipping free of the complex harmonic and rhythmic designs of bebop. He was fluent in that language, but he was also one of the first to adapt his instrument to a freer postbop language, often playing chords with a pair of mallets in each hand.

He released more than 40 albums and appeared on many more, including some regarded as classics, like “Out to Lunch,” by the alto saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, and “Mode for Joe,” by the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Both of those albums were a byproduct of Mr. Hutcherson’s close affiliation with Blue Note Records, from 1963 to 1977. He was part of a wave of young artists who defined the label’s forays into experimentalism, including the pianist Andrew Hill and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. But he also worked with hard-bop stalwarts like the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and he later delved into jazz-funk and Afro-Latin grooves.

Mr. Hutcherson had a clear, ringing sound, but his style was luminescent and coolly fluid; more than Milt Jackson or Lionel Hampton, his major predecessors on the vibraphone, he made an art out of resonating overtones and chiming decay.

This coloristic range of sound, which he often used in the service of emotional expression, was one reason for the deep influence he left on stylistic inheritors like Joe Locke, Warren Wolf, Chris Dingman and Stefon Harris, who recently assessed him as “by far the most harmonically advanced person to ever play the vibraphone.”

Robert Hutcherson was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1941. His father, Eli, was a brick mason, and his mother, Esther, was a hairdresser.

Growing up in a black community in Pasadena, Mr. Hutcherson was drawn to jazz partly by way of his older siblings: His brother, Teddy, had gone to high school with Mr. Gordon, and his sister, Peggy, was a singer who worked with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. (She later toured and recorded with Ray Charles as a Raelette.)

Mr. Hutcherson, who took piano lessons as a child, often described his transition to vibraphone as the result of an epiphany: Walking past a record store one day, he heard a recording of Milt Jackson and was hooked. A friend at school, the bassist Herbie Lewis, further encouraged his interest in the vibraphone, so Mr. Hutcherson saved up and bought one. He was promptly booked for a concert with Mr. Lewis’s band.

“Well, I hit the first note,” he recalled of that performance in a 2014 interview with JazzTimes. He added, “But from the second note on, it was complete chaos. You never heard people boo and laugh like that. I was completely humiliated. But my mom was just smiling, and my father was saying, ‘See, I told you he should have been a bricklayer.’ ”

Mr. Hutcherson persevered, eventually working with musicians like Mr. Dolphy, whom he had first met when Mr. Dolphy was his sister’s boyfriend, and the tenor saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd. In 1962 he joined a band led by a pair of Count Basie sidemen, the tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell and the trombonist Al Grey, which brought him to New York City for a debut engagement at Birdland.

The group broke up not long afterward, but Mr. Hutcherson stayed in New York, driving a taxicab for a living, his vibraphone stashed in the trunk. He was living in the Bronx and married to his high school sweetheart, the former Beth Buford, with whom he had a son, Barry — the inspiration for his best-known tune, the lilting modernist waltz “Little B’s Poem.”

Mr. Hutcherson caught a break when Mr. Lewis, his childhood friend, came to town and introduced him to the trombonist Grachan Moncur III, who in turn introduced him to Jackie McLean. “One Step Beyond,” an album by Mr. McLean released on Blue Note in 1963, featured Mr. Hutcherson’s vibraphone as the only chordal instrument. From that point on, he was busy.

The first album he released as a leader was “Dialogue” (1965), featuring Mr. Hill, the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and the saxophonist and flutist Sam Rivers. Among his notable subsequent albums was “Stick-Up!” (1966), with partners including Mr. Henderson and the pianist McCoy Tyner, with whom he would forge a close alliance.

After being arrested for marijuana possession in Central Park in 1967, Mr. Hutcherson lost his cabaret card, required of any musician working in New York clubs. He returned to California and struck a rapport with the tenor saxophonist Harold Land. Among the recordings they made together was “Ummh,” a funk shuffle that became a crossover hit in 1970. (It was later sampled by the rapper Ice Cube.)

In the early ’70s Mr. Hutcherson bought an acre of land along the coast in Montara, Calif., where he built a house. He lived there with his wife, the former Rosemary Zuniga, whom he married in 1972. She survives him, along with their son, Teddy Hutcherson, a marketing production manager for SFJazz, as does his older son, Barry Hutcherson, a jazz drummer.

After his tenure on Blue Note, Mr. Hutcherson released albums on Columbia, Landmark and other labels, working with Mr. Tyner, the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and — on screen, in the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier film “Round Midnight” — with Mr. Gordon and the pianist Herbie Hancock. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Hutcherson toured with the first edition of the SFJazz Collective, an ensemble devoted equally to jazz repertory and the creation of new music. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010.

After releasing a series of albums on the European label Kind of Blue, he returned to Blue Note in 2014 to release a soul-jazz effort, “Enjoy the View,” with collaborators including the alto saxophonist David Sanborn.

Speaking in recent years, Mr. Hutcherson was fond of citing a bit of insight from an old friend. “Eric Dolphy said music is like the wind,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. “You don’t know where it came from, and you don’t know where it went. You can’t control it. All you can do is get inside the sphere of it and be swept away.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/ar...ies-jazz.html?

[harrybarracuda]

Not gonna put him in Sporting Heroes because he was just another FIFA crook...

João Havelange, president of Fifa from 1974 to 1998, dies aged 100



João Havelange, the Brazilian who ran Fifa for two decades, has died aged 100, the Brazilian media has reported.

Havelange had been admitted to hospital in July suffering from pneumonia having been ill for some time. The hospital, while refusing to comment on the cause of death, put out a statement expressing its “sympathy for his family and friends”.

Havelange presided over Fifa from 1974 until 1998 where he was credited by many for expanding football into a global game and remained as honorary president until 2013.

He resigned that role following an investigation into allegations that he had accepted bribes to grant lucrative World Cup contracts to the marketing company ISL.

He was also a longtime member of the International Olympic Committee until resigning in December 2011 after an earlier investigation into his relationship with ISL.

While at Fifa he was credited with encouraging the development of the sport in new markets, such as Africa, Asia and the United States and was president of the Brazilian football confederation when the country won its first three World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1970.

His son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, took over for two more World Cup trophies in 1994 and 2002 but also faced allegations of irregularities, which he denied, and he resigned for medical reasons in 2012 after 23 years as CBF president.

https://www.theguardian.com/football...fifa-ioc-dies?

[harrybarracuda]

Arthur Hiller, 'Love Story' Director, Dead at 92



Arthur Hiller, the director of Love Story, The Out-of-Towners, The In-Laws, The Hospital, among others, died Wednesday of natural causes, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced. Hiller, who served as the Academy president between 1993 and 1997, was 92.

Hiller is best known for directing 1970's Love Story, the Oscar-nominated drama starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal. Filmed on a shoestring budget of $2 million, the film went on to gross over $106 million, or $659 million in today's adjusted box office. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the success of Love Story, considered one of cinema's greatest tearjerkers, allowed the struggling Paramount to take on projects like The Godfather and Chinatown.

“Arthur Hiller was an integral part of one of the most important experiences of my life," MacGraw said in a statement. "He was a remarkable, gifted, generous human being, and I will miss him terribly." Hiller was nominated for the Best Director Oscar for Love Story.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Hiller began his career working for Canadian television before moving to Los Angeles to work on NBC series like Gunsmoke, Naked City and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1957, Hiller directed The Careless Years, the first of over 30 films he would helm over a career that spanned nearly 50 years.

Over his career, Hiller would direct a pair of films by Oscar-winning playwright Paddy Chayefsky – 1964's The Americanization of Emily and 1971's The Hospital – as well as numerous scripts by Neil Simon, including 1970's The Out-of-Towners, 1971's Plaza Suite and 1984's The Lonely Guy.

Other notable films from Hiller include the Babe Ruth biopic The Babe, the Al Pacino-starring Author! Author! and a pair of films that united Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder, 1976's Silver Streak and 1989's See No Evil, Hear No Evil. Hiller's final big screen credit was 2006's National Lampoon's Pucked starring Jon Bon Jovi.

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved friend Arthur Hiller," Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement to Variety. "I was a member of the Board during his presidency and fortunate enough to witness firsthand his dedication to the Academy and his lifelong passion for visual storytelling."

Arthur Hiller, 'Love Story' Director, Dead at 92 - Rolling Stone